UMBRELLA PINE, S. RAPHAEL
CHAPTER VIII
S. RAPHAEL AND FRÉJUS
Rapid Rise—An exposed spot, unsuitable as a winter resort—Napoleon here embarks for Elba: his journey from Fontainebleau—The via Aurelia—Fréjus—Choking up of the harbour—Roman remains—The Cathedral—Agricola—Monuments—S. Hilary—Sieyès; sans phrases—Désauguier—The Caveau—His Carnival Lay—Some of his jokes.
A FEW years ago S. Raphael was a fishing village about an old Templar church. There were in it but a couple of hundred poor folk. Then some speculators cast their eyes on the place, and calculating, not unreasonably, on the lack of intelligence of visitors from the North, resolved on making it into a winter sanatorium. They bought out the fisher families, and set to work to build hotels and lay out esplanades and gardens.
Now any person with a grain of sense in his head has but to look at the map to see that S. Raphael is the very last place on the coast suitable as a winter resort. It lies between two great humps of mountains, the Chaine des Maures and the Estérel. It has before it the ever-shallowing Gulf of Fréjus, that stretches back into alluvial deposit and pestiferous morasses—open to the north; and down this bare, unwholesome plain roars and rages the Mistral. It has blown the sea out of the Bay to the distance of two miles. It is enough, entering the ears, to drive the frail lungs out of the breast betwixt the teeth.
The Argens, which has flowed from west to east, receiving the drainage of the Montagnes des Maures, receives also the Parturby and the Endre from the limestone, and then turns about and runs almost due south, but with an incline to the east. It forms a wide basin, once a long arm of sea, but now filled up with deposit, and with festering lagoons sprinkled over its surface; the two great mountain chains from east and west contract, and force the winds that come down from the north, and the snows of the Alps, to concentrate their malice on S. Raphael. If you love a draught, then sit before a roaring fire, with an open window behind you. If you desire a draught on a still larger scale, go to S. Raphael.
Perhaps the speculators who invented this Station Hivernale thought that it was necessary to add something more, in order to attract patients to the place, and Valescure was established among pine woods. The aromatic scent of the terebinth, its sanatory properties, so highly estimated, so experimentally efficacious in pulmonary disorders, etc., etc. Valescure is just as certainly exposed to winds as is S. Raphael. As to pines and eucalyptus, they can be had elsewhere, in combination with shelter.